PBX features are in large part designed to provide the user with the ability to specify how communications should be handled when the user is away from his/her office or desk. For example a user may specify that calls should not be directed to his/her telephone but should be immediately rerouted to a voice mail account. This capability allows for efficient communications within the organization that the PBX serves. However, according to the prior art, the user is required to manually set up and enable such services via his/her desk telephone. Active set up and enablement of such features is often a hindrance for a busy worker who, for example, may be hurrying to a meeting. Often times the user will forget to set the features up in the most advantageous way, which decreases the value of the PBX feature set.
One approach to overcoming this problem is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,032—‘Method of establishing communication link to one of multiple devices associated with single telephone number’ by Pinard, Raju and Rehder, wherein a ‘one-number’ system is used to ring many telephones at the same time or in sequence, in the hope of locating the user. Such prior art ‘one-number’ systems do not provide the full flexibility of most PBX feature sets.